


Chateau Wayne

by audreycritter



Series: Cor Et Cerebrum [26]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Books, Fluff, France - Freeform, Gen, Mentions of Nightmares, Minor Injuries, Platonic Cuddling, father-son bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 16:39:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13345215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Jason and Bruce talk about not sleeping and missed opportunities, and make an effort to revive old plans.





	Chateau Wayne

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChimaeraKitten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChimaeraKitten/gifts).



> thanks to Dawn and Cerusee for brainstorming and reading over this!

The soft turn of a page was one of the only sounds in the den, along with the crackling of a fire in the fireplace. It was quiet enough that it wasn’t a struggle to hear someone growl, “Shit,” in the hallway. Bruce paused mid-paragraph and listened. There was a exhalation that followed the cussing, an irritated and tired sigh rather than a huff of rage.  
  
Bruce stood and bent his head to peer down the hall, then took a full step out of the study.  
  
“Jay?”  
  
Jason, leaning against the wall and bracing himself with one hand, jumped slightly— just a jolt of his shoulders— and muttered flatly:  
  
“Hey.”  
  
“Something wrong?” Bruce asked from the doorway.  
  
“Uh,” Jason sniffled hard. “What isn’t fucking wrong. Sprained my ankle. Got a sinus infection. Laptop battery’s dead, like completely dead. Had a nightmare. What are you doing up?”  
  
“Couldn’t sleep,” Bruce answered. “I’ve been reading.”  
  
“Fun,” Jason said, his voice tight.  
  
“You look like you need to sit down,” Bruce said, moving forward so he could see Jason’s pale face. “Want to come in the den?”  
  
Jason didn’t move. Then he shifted, his palm still splayed on the wall, and winced. His eyes were shut.  
  
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Uh.”  
  
“Hm?” Bruce had one hand out, because Jason was beginning to sway a little.  
  
“Could you…uh, shit. I’m super fucking dizzy.”  
  
That was all Bruce needed. He ducked his head, ignoring the grinding sensation in his back, and looped Jason’s free arm around his shoulders. He gave him a moment to adjust before turning him around. “I’ve got you. This way.”  
  
Jason leaned on him, limping, all the way to the couch. He collapsed back onto the cushions with a sigh. Bruce pulled the ankle he’d been favoring up onto the coffee table and Jason cracked one eye open to look at him.  
  
“We won’t tell Alfred,” Bruce said. “But I think he’d allow it anyway.”  
  
“When are you going to stop pretending you’re the boss around here,” Jason grumbled with a sleepy grin.  
  
“I’m the public face of the company,” Bruce replied. “I’ll be right back.”  
  
Jason was awake and reading Bruce’s book when Bruce returned with a glass of water.  
  
“I was reading that,” Bruce said, handing Jason the water.  
  
“Funny. It looked like it was just sitting on the table.” Jason’s tousled curls remained bent over the book when he accepted the glass.  
  
“Hah,” Bruce said dryly. “Here I thought I’d raised you well, but you’re still stealing my stuff when I turn around.”  
  
“Maybe stop leaving your stuff lying around,” Jason said, turning a page. “You’d think a guy as smart as you would learn.”  
  
“I think you were trying to insult me, but all I’m hearing is that you still think I’m smart.”  
  
Jason made a dismissive noise. “Don’t kid yourself, B. It’s probably just the drugs talking.”  
  
Bruce settled back on the couch, shifting a little until he found the place his back and shoulder ached the least. He raised an eyebrow and nodded toward Jason’s propped up leg, the wrapped ankle. If Jason had taken pain meds that might affect his thinking, that meant he had to be in a significant amount of pain.  
  
“Just how bad is that sprain? Did Dev look at it?”  
  
Jason languidly turned a page and handed Bruce the empty water glass, then patted Bruce’s knee. His expression was a little distracted, a little reproached. “Calm the hell down before you give yourself a coronary. I’m just taking antibiotics for the sinus infection and I knew what I was saying. Yes, he looked at it. He wrapped it himself.”  
  
“You’re a horrid child,” Bruce said, exhaling.  
  
“I just know exactly where all your buttons are, you old robot. You make it too easy to push ‘em.”  
  
“Hn,” Bruce said. “This, after I gave you my book.”  
  
Jason snorted, a kind of laugh that he swallowed. “You make one hell of an unreliable narrator.”  
  
Bruce leaned back on the couch and didn’t argue. Jason tossed the book onto the coffee table with a thud and slumped back, dropping his head on Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce stilled under the sudden weight and then cautiously relaxed, with the sensation like something fragile and flighty had landed on his outstretched hand.  
  
“My ears are all stuffed up,” Jason complained, rubbing at the one not pressed against Bruce’s shoulder. “I’m using you as a compress.”  
  
“Hn. I don’t mind.”  
  
“Why  _The Count of Monte Cristo_?”  
  
“Damian’s reading it for school,” Bruce answered, internally wincing as he braced himself for all the ways that admission could go wrong with Jason. But Jason just squished himself a little tighter against Bruce’s side.  
  
“So, what kind of nightmares were you having?” Jason asked, his voice serious and low and calm. If Bruce didn’t hate how transparent he could be— would always be, apparently— to a Robin, his primary reaction would have been just a swell of pride.  
  
“Who said I was having nightmares?” he asked, nudging Jason’s with an elbow. “I seem to remember you were the one who brought up nightmares.”

“Why else would you be reading Damian’s homework at three in the morning on a night you were forced to take off?”  
  
“First of all, Dev does not  _force_  me to do anything. He gave good advice and I heeded it. Second, I’ll be fine.”  
  
“Bullshit and bullshit,” Jason replied amiably. The entire exchange would have been like walking the precipice of a skyscraper without a grappling cable, except Jason was still cuddled against his side, the sleepy limpness an extension of the trust that had re-blossomed between them in the past year or so.  
  
“You?” Bruce asked, tentative nonetheless.  
  
“Nightmares?” Jason questioned, to clarify.  
  
“Mm.” A noise of assent.  
  
“Same old, same old,” Jason tossed off casually, but he’d grown tense. “You know.”  
  
Bruce did, even if they weren’t the same nightmares; he knew what it was like to wander hellish but well-trodden landscapes. He extracted his arm to wrap it around Jason’s shoulders and give him a gentle squeeze.  
  
“I was in Marseilles a few years ago,” Jason said, nudging the book with his uninjured foot. “I almost toured the Chateau d’If.”  
  
“Almost?”  
  
“I told myself it was because I wasn’t that interested,” Jason said slowly. “But, I think it was ‘cause I didn’t want to go without you.”  
  
“We were planning a trip,” Bruce suddenly remembered, with a lurch of his stomach. There were hundreds of details ingrained in his memory from the days before Jason…before Jason was gone. But he hadn’t let himself think about things they’d left unfinished. It had felt, for a long time, like cutting himself open, to dwell on anything tangled with  _what if_. “To France.”  
  
Jason craned his head to look up at Bruce’s face, relief and worry warring in his eyes and expression. The shock-white lock of hair was shoved back from his forehead with the other curving strands.  
  
“Yeah,” he said. “You okay?”  
  
Bruce closed his eyes for a span of two breaths, then looked down at Jason and gave him a brief smile. It might have been forced and small, but he meant it nonetheless. “Yes. And we need to book a trip.”  
  
“We don’t have to,” Jason said quickly, looking away and down at the table or floor. Bruce couldn’t quite tell. “You already took that time last summer to drive me to Montana, and I’ve got school, and I could just go by myself sometime when—”  
  
“Jay,” Bruce interrupted him gently. “We should go. Make a list of what you want to see.”  
  
“Yessir,” Jason said with a mocking salute. He sobered, though, and added quietly, “I’d like that.”  
  
“What’s your spring break look like?”  
  
“French.” Jason grinned. “Just now.”  
  
“You didn’t have plans?” Bruce raised an eyebrow.  
  
“I have other ones now.” Jason yawned and squished himself down further into the couch and against Bruce. “You gonna try to sleep?”  
  
“I don’t think I can,” Bruce said honestly. The idea of trying to lie down made his mind start racing, much less actually trying.  
  
“Yeah, me either,” Jason said, despite his yawn. “So. Chateau d’If. Versailles. The Louvre. Maybe the zoo.”  
  
“The zoo?”  
  
“Rodin liked it.”  
  
“Hn. Alright.”  
  
“You sure you have time?” Jason asked after he was silent for a few seconds. His finger was winding up his hoodie drawstring, then unraveling it, over and over.  
  
“I’ll make time. I want to take a trip with you, and Montana doesn’t count. That was for medical care. It would be nice to be able to talk to you, without your intelligence impaired.” Bruce watched the long, calloused finger disappear under the cords of red string.  
  
“You mean, it’ll be nice for me to talk at you while you grunt and— hey. My  _intelligence_?” Jason pulled back just enough to look at him with an affronted scowl. “What’s that supposed to fucking mean?  
  
“It’s not your fault. It was the anesthetics,” Bruce said.  
  
“I was  _fine_  under anesthesia. It barely works on me,” Jason said, jabbing his elbow into Bruce’s side. Bruce grunted and winced.  
  
“Jay. You tried to convince me you remembered all the original Pokémon.”  
  
“I  _do_ ,” Jason said, frowning. “I think.”  
  
“Then you just said ‘Pikachu’ over and over for seven minutes. I have a video.”  
  
“The frick you do,” Jason exclaimed. “Dick would have brought it up by now.”  
  
“I haven’t shown anyone except Alfred. Leverage is gone if you waste your buying power.” Bruce knew it was his business voice, but the real reason was that he’d been both too protective and too selfish to share it.  
  
“Maybe I do want to go to France alone,” Jason spat, crossing his arms. He hadn’t actually moved away from Bruce’s side.  
  
“You don’t mean that.”  
  
“I don’t,” Jason said with a sigh.  
  
“I meant it. I want to be able to talk,” Bruce said, giving the broad shoulders another light squeeze. “I’ll finalize some things in the morning.”  
  
“Where were you in the book?” Jason asked, yawning and stretching forward. It left a cold gap against Bruce’s side on the couch; it felt frigid and empty until Jason resettled there.  
  
“Page 326,” Bruce said.  
  
“Of course you’d remember it like that,” Jason scoffed fondly, flipping the book open. He held it in front of the both of them. “Tell me when to turn the page and I’ll give your old man wrists a break.”  
Bruce considered protesting this but Jason was already reading silently, his lips shaping the occasional longer word, and seemingly content to stay put.  
  
So Bruce started reading again and instead of telling Jason when to turn, he let him set the pace, and filled his own pauses with surreptitious and grateful glances at his son.  
  
Another chapter in, Bruce dropped a kiss in Jason’s hair. Jason’s eyes flicked up for the briefest second— Bruce kept his own locked on the text he’d already read— and then Jason scrunched down and muttered happily, “Love you, too, old man.”


End file.
